Heartbreak turns into pride during tribute to nurse killed in Vietnam

Monday

Nov 11, 2013 at 12:01 AM

HACKENSACK, N.J. — For more than a decade, Frank Alexander ignored invitations to come to the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial to honor his sister, the state’s only woman to be killed in action in...

By Leslie Brody

HACKENSACK, N.J. — For more than a decade, Frank Alexander ignored invitations to come to the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial to honor his sister, the state’s only woman to be killed in action in that brutal war.

Capt. Eleanor Grace Alexander was a nurse who died in late 1967 when her transport plane smashed into a Vietnamese mountain in the fog. She was one of 1,563 New Jersey casualties whose names are inscribed in the memorial’s circle of black granite panels.

“I really wanted to have nothing to do with it; I’d lost enough already,” her brother said. “What a waste the war was.”

His reluctance changed a year ago, however, when he learned that his sister’s sacrifice had made a deep impression on another generation. Tour guides told him that when student groups visited the memorial in Holmdel, N.J., girls were so taken by the young nurse’s story that they often made rubbings of her name.

“That was quite moving to me,” Alexander said. “It moved me enough to get involved.”

And so when his sister was honored by a new monument of her own in late September, Alexander was there to unveil it. At 70, he said the plaque made his family “feel proud and humbled.”

Eleanor Alexander was among eight American women — all nurses — who lost their lives in the line of duty in Vietnam. Nicknamed “Rocky,” she was flying back to her hospital base in Qui Nhon when her plane crashed on Nov. 30, 1967. She had just turned 27. A fiancé, a wedding dress and a cedar hope chest full of Fieldcrest towels were waiting for her at home.

She was buried in River Vale, N.J., where she lived with her mother before enlisting. A park in town bears her name.

The special recognition of Alexander’s sacrifice comes as women are taking on more roles on the battlefield: The Defense Department announced this year that it was gradually lifting the military’s official ban on women in combat. In reality, women frequently found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan; at the time of the January announcement, defense officials said 152 women in uniform died there in the past decade.

More than 100 guests, including Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, gathered next to the Vietnam Era Museum & Educational Center for the 15th anniversary of its opening near the memorial. A color guard’s salute started the short ceremony. John Nugent, a center trustee who served in Vietnam, said it was fitting to have the plaque for Alexander in the Women Veterans Meditation Garden.

“May we always pause to think and reflect,” he said, “before we commit the American military to wars in foreign lands.”

Some Vietnam veterans were teary. Nugent said later that some were suffering now from pain they had tried to stifle for decades.

“There’s a lot of post-traumatic stress syndrome among veterans in their 60s and 70s,” he said. “They’re retired and going back over their lives and that’s surfacing.”

In younger days, he said, “We buried it. We sucked it up. We moved on. But it was a horrible scar.”

Eleanor Alexander was an operating room supervisor for cosmetic surgeries in Manhattan when she volunteered for service in Vietnam.

“She wanted to help,” said her brother, a retired Prudential executive. “She went in with a great deal of enthusiasm, and as her tenure progressed she became less enchanted. She was spending more time helping the wounded enemy than the U.S. force, and that bothered her a lot.”

Five months after she arrived, she had her chance to treat more Americans when fierce fighting broke out in Pleiku, about 60 miles from her base. When another surgical nurse summoned for an emergency team heading there couldn’t be located right away, Alexander grabbed the colleague’s gear and jacket and took her place.

“This is going to be a short note because for the first time we are really busy,” she wrote in a letter to her mother that Nov. 13. “The troops around Pleiku are getting hit quite badly. … For the past three days, I’ve been running on about four hours sleep. Funny thing is, I love it.”

Two weeks later Alexander’s plane crashed with 26 people aboard. Pat Julian Vellucci of Paramus was a staff sergeant nearby. Sent to recover the victims, the 20-year-old recited a prayer over her body.

“She was a goddess to us for volunteering for Army nursing,” Vellucci said. “She was our Florence Nightingale.”